Writers of the Future Volume 31

by L. Ron Hubbard

  Still, without her and Monda and the rest, he would never have gotten the money and the book. And the book was the key.

  In the pitch-black night, the Undercity changed from a confusing tangle of dead ends, alleys, and crumbled ruins into a deadly labyrinth. Abe’s mother talked about how the streets had been clean and lit in the old days, before the war, but when the Kalsaaris had invaded they hadn’t been gentle. The sewers were now filled with imps and lesser demons, the descendants of various weapons of war utilized by both sides during the Kalsaari occupation and subsequent Allied liberation of the city. Parasitic gremlins swarmed through most buildings, eating supports and ruining attempts to rebuild, while more dangerous things—unexploded brymmstones, trapped war-fiends, and worse—lay beneath every pile of rubble. All this, of course, didn’t even include the dangers posed by the desperate survivors—people like Krim, lurking in the dark with a sharp knife and a keen ear for jingling coins.

  Tracing a long-memorized route through the rubble in the dark, Abe arrived home. On the front steps, the candles in the small Hannite shrine burned low. Sighing, Abe bowed to it and slipped past to unlock the door and go in.

  Before the war, the Anastasis home had been a three-story townhouse squeezed between a bakery and a church. Today the bakery was abandoned, playing home to a rotating cast of squatters and vermin; the church was merely rubble, destroyed by a brymmstone during the initial Kalsaari bombardment. The home itself was now only one-story tall, the top having burned when the church was destroyed, and the second story was half collapsed. Abe and his mother used the old sitting room as a makeshift bedroom, had access to the kitchen and the front hall, and stayed out of his father’s old office, just in case the ceiling finally collapsed beneath the weight of the rubble upstairs.

  Abe took the book into his father’s office. The risk was there, true, but he trusted that if the ceiling hadn’t collapsed in five years, it wouldn’t likely collapse tonight. Also, there was no other place the book could feasibly avoid his mother’s notice. On a cursory glance, if she found it here, she would likely conclude it was just one of his father’s old ledgers or law books and leave it be—that, or command Abe to sell it, which put it safely back in his own hands. His mother couldn’t sell his father’s books without weeping.

  Abe lit the only oil lamp his family had left and sat behind his father’s hulking desk. Even atop its broad, bare expanse, the book looked menacing—a kind of curse made thick and dark and physical, like a clot of congealed blood. Licking his lips, Abe untied the strings and pulled back the cover.

  The book sprang open and flipped itself to a random page, somewhere in the middle. Every available space on the yellowed pages was filled with a cramped, meticulous handwriting in deep maroon ink. Abe tried to turn back to the beginning, but every time he flipped a page, the page flipped back. Finally, growing frustrated at the enchantment (was this some kind of security feature? Perhaps …) he settled down to read.

  If you are reading this, stop! You are unqualified to use this book, and any attempt to utilize its lore will inevitably end in serious injury, death, or worse. Return this volume at once to its place of origin.

  Abe blinked—what a peculiar thing to say in the middle of a book. He pressed on.

  Since you are still reading, the text said, it is evident the above warning was insufficient to dissuade you from your self-destructive course. You are to be simultaneously scolded for your recklessness and commended on your bravery. Consider yourself both as of this moment.

  Abe grinned. A book with a sense of humor was not what he had expected. He skimmed the next paragraph but found the handwriting difficult to read without focusing, so had to go back to the beginning again.

  If you expect to be able to skip ahead or skim your way to an understanding of the art of conjuration in a short time, it is evident that you are a fool and that, again, it must be stressed that your death is almost guaranteed. You are advised for a second and final time to close this book and get rid of it.

  Abe sat back, eyes narrowing, and read the paragraph again. Was it … could a book be aware of him? Was that possible? “Are you alive?” he asked aloud, and then kept reading.

  As has been implied, this book is an instructional manual designed to assist the experienced practitioners of the High Arts to gain facility in the art of conjuration in a relatively short period of time. As you are inexperienced in all magecraft, however, it would be advisable for instruction to begin at the essential basics of magical instruction, since without these it is unlikely you will be able to conjure anything at all except, perhaps, a splitting headache. Tonight will involve an overview of what “magic” is, exactly, since that is both the most important topic to understand and the only topic simple enough to outline before your mother wakes up.

  Abe’s finger shot back from the line he was reading, his eyes wide. He slammed the book closed. “What the … what the hell?”

  The house creaked above as his mother’s bare feet touched the floor in the one usable room upstairs. Her reedy voice trickled through the dark. “Abe, dear, is that you?

  Abe backed away from the book, staring at it as though it might leap off the desk. He remembered what the old smuggler had said: “Don’t thank me, Oz. I’ve just killed you.”

  Gods, he thought, was he right?

  Abe’s mother insisted on fixing him something to eat, despite how late it was and the paucity of their stores. She wiped the very last vestiges of some sour grape jam from an old, crusty jar and scraped them over stale crackers. Once she had laid it before her son, she blew out the candle. They sat together in the dark. Abe didn’t eat.

  “No sense wasting the food.” His mother said. There was no fight in her voice, though, no sense of warning or caution or even admonishment. She said things by rote these days, Abe knew. What was the difference if they wasted food, anyway? They were going to starve sooner or later.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late. I was busy.” Abe said, picking up a cracker and dipping it in a warm cup of water to soften it a bit.

  “Did you earn any money?” she squeaked.

  Abe wanted to tell her about the fifty silver coins still under his stolen robe, but he didn’t. That money couldn’t be spent without Krim and Monda finding out, and that would mean a grisly death for both of them. Besides, if he dropped it on the table, his mother would know he’d fallen in with thieves. That would be the end of her, he guessed.

  She waited for an answer, so he cleared his throat. “No … nothing today. No ships new in town, so nobody needed a copyist.”

  “Mmmm …” Abe’s mother tsked between her teeth. “Forgetting all about us, they are. They used to clog the harbor, you know. Your father wrote the contracts to a hundred different ships every year; he wore a gold chain about his neck, and when he walked down the street …”

  Abe could recite what followed by heart. His mother, conjuring images of a past so far gone he wasn’t really sure it had ever existed. How every house had a sunstone they’d set out to soak during the brief daylight and then use it all the night to light their streets. A city of light and life and happiness—all that drivel. She blamed the Kalsaaris, of course, and Illin’s western allies who were so quick to row back home once the city was “liberated,” and the mirror men—the “Defenders of the Balance”—who had been left behind to clean up the mess. She didn’t speak a word about the toppers, though, or the Prince and his Black Guard, or the thousand thieves and thugs and sellswords who prowled the Undercity, leeching off the dying corpse of Illin.

  He used to argue with her, tell her they should do something about it, how they could work together to fix the city. How someday he could learn sorcery at the foot of a great mage and fix the broken streets of the Undercity with a wave of his hand. The arguments used to carry on for hours, his mother’s voice growing steadily weaker in the face of Abe’s anger. He didn’t bother yelling anymore, tho
ugh. Now all he did was listen.

  When, at last, she’d gone to bed, Abe crept back into the ruined office and opened the book. It picked up right where it had left off.

  Magic, as you probably are unaware, is governed by five elemental forces. In ancient times, people misinterpreted these forces and associated them with the so-called “elements”—Fire, Water, Air, and Earth—and had no idea of the existence of a fifth. These people were primitives and superstitious fools, and you should take care not to follow their example. Magic is far more complicated than that.

  The five energies are the Lumen and the Ether, the Dweomer and the Fey, and the Astral …

  Abe yawned. When were they going to get to something practical? He kept on.

  If you are growing tired, perhaps you ought to take a rest and come back another time. The study of magic is extremely taxing, both physically and mentally, and it would be a waste of your effort to attempt to master it while fatigued.

  Abe sat up straighter. “You … you are alive. You can see me!”

  Every use of these energies, known colloquially as “magic” or “sorcery,” but more accurately as the High Arts (as distinguished from the Low Arts), involves the use of three elements.

  “No!” Abe hissed into the pages, taking care not to make so much noise as to wake his mother. “I want to talk with you, book! I want you to explain some things to me.”

  The first of these elements is the energy to be drawn from the world surrounding you, known as the “ley.” The second element is the incantation by which the energy is drawn, known occasionally as the spell or ritual. The third of these elements is the focus, or the physical entity through which the energy is to be channeled by the incantation. In the case of a spell, this is the sorcerer him or herself; in the case of the ritual, it is through the object used to channel the power. (1)

  Abe frowned, and referred to the footnote. It read: 1) Pay attention, you insufferable little ragamuffin. This book is not in your possession to chit-chat, but rather to instruct you as a master teacher might a dull-witted pupil. You aren’t even taking notes, so the likelihood that lessons will have to be repeated grows with each passing instant, and this narrative thread is already boring beyond description.

  Sitting back, Abe scowled. “Maybe I won’t read you, then. How about that?”

  Glancing back at the page, the book had not responded. It continued to drone on and on about magical energies, incantational postures, and channeling techniques. He read it as long as he could keep his eyes open, then dragged himself upstairs to sleep on the threadbare pallet beside his mother. He dreamed of Carlo’s crystal eye, following him through the tangled ruins of the Undercity, the book clutched in his bloodstained hands.

  The next morning, Abe woke late. The thinnest rays of sunshine were still slipping past the rim of the Upper City, casting just enough light through the gaping holes in the roof that Abe could see that his mother was awake. He guessed that he would find her out front, praying to the shrine while the light still held. It was a common practice among the widows of Illin, especially since the Kalsaaris had burned most of the churches during the occupation and the toppers had yet to secure funds to repair them. Abe’s own mother refused to walk the mile to the nearest functional church, claiming that the women there lived too close to the docks to be of “clean reputation.”

  When Abe stumbled downstairs, however, he didn’t find his mother out front praying, but rather sitting in his father’s office, the big black book of magic open across her knees. “Mother! What are you doing?”

  She shrugged her bony shoulders. “Just looking through some of your father’s old books. You know, I never knew he had a cookbook before.”

  Abe felt as if his mouth were unable to form words. “Cook … book?”

  She shrugged weakly. “Funny, really, that I should find it now that we haven’t any food. Well, I’m off to the market. They say some mirror men will be passing out bolts of cloth later and the moths have been at the quilt again. Winter is never too far away, you know.”

  Abe watched her leave, wordless. When the door closed, he tore open the spell book.

  It is strongly advised that this book not fall into the hands of individuals even less talented than yourself, as their piggish, ignorant eyes are harmful to this book’s contents.

  “That’s my mother you’re talking about,” Abe growled.

  The exact nature or relationship of the stupendous ignorami permitted to flap about these pages is immaterial to the original warning. This advice ought to be heeded, as the consequences are apt to be most dire.

  “Now you’re threatening me? Well, what if I toss you in a fire, huh? What about that?”

  Furthermore, it is strongly suggested that no vandalism be done to this book, as its contents are too valuable to you, the reader, as well as to the world in general. However, given the vagaries of human free will, no action can or will be taken to prevent the destruction of this volume should it be deemed essential by the owner.

  “Let’s just say I won’t find it essential if you leave off insulting my mother—how about that?”

  Apparently satisfied, the book broke into more tedious magical instruction. To continue with our lessons from the previous chapter, let us begin by explaining the nature of conjuration itself.

  Abe spent the rest of the day reading, huddled by the lantern, trying to glean some practical knowledge of how to conjure what he would need to in order to impress Mondo and Krim and the rest of the band. All he got was general information—history, basic theory, simple exercises and drills, but not a word about a single spell. He couldn’t even conjure an ounce of gold or a thimble of water—he didn’t even know where to begin. He couldn’t skip ahead, he couldn’t skim to find the good parts; he was a slave to the book’s slow, methodical prose.

  He had only ten days to get Carlo his money? It was impossible. He didn’t know the first thing about what he was doing, and the damned book was no help. What could he do? What would he say to the gang?

  Finally, during the brief period of light as the sun passed from its hiding place behind the Upper City to its hiding place behind the edge of the world, Abe came across something potentially useful. The book was talking about the uses of advanced conjuration, and it finished with a discussion of what it termed “pure beings.”

  Pure beings, or “Spirits,” as they are sometimes known, are creatures of a particular pure energy type that, so far as arcane theory is concerned, exist in planes of origin parallel to our own where only one pure energy is in abundance. These beings have a myriad of applications, the most obvious being the war fiends conjured to assault enemy positions. Those specific entities are pure fey energy and, as such, are well suited to the vagaries of war and destruction (though they are disinclined to take orders). Accordingly, a wide variety of daemons and djinns, angels and fiends are used by sorcerers to accomplish tasks that would, otherwise, have to be executed by human beings. These spirits sometimes manifest themselves in obvious ways, but can also be found trapped within mundane objects.

  Abe blinked at the words, and then read them a second time. “You mean … like in books? Are you saying that you are some kind of spirit trapped inside this book?”

  Looking back at the page, only one sentence could be clearly resolved, burning prominently in the center of the page, like a subtitle:

  You’re finally learning something.

  Krim found Abe just as true night fell. As usual, she slipped inside the house unnoticed. In the few months she had been coming to the house, Abe doubted his mother had ever laid eyes on her. This suited him fine; Krim wasn’t fit to meet his mother.

  “You ready?” She sat across from Abe in his father’s old, dusty chair. She put her feet up on the desk. “Learned any good spells yet?”

  Abe took a deep breath. There was a right answer and a wrong answer here; he picked the right
one. “A little bit.”

  “Good. Monda is pissed a stupid book cost all fifty. C’mon.” She sprung lightly to her feet and cocked her head, waiting.

  Abe stood, suddenly aware of how tired he felt. The room spun a little as the blood equalized in his head. He slid the magic book into a knapsack and threw it over one shoulder. “I’m coming—just don’t get too far ahead, okay?”

  Krim’s big dark eyes twinkled in the lantern light. “What’s a matter, schoolboy? Worried somebody might steal your homework?”

  Abe grimaced but didn’t speak. The answer, though, was yes.

  The Brotherhood of Light, as Monda’s group called itself, met, ironically, in the very darkest part of the Undercity, almost directly beneath the center of the Upper City’s crescent-shaped foundation. The Spire of Dreams, the great tower that had once connected Upper- to Undercity, lay crumpled like an abandoned ball gown across the blocks of ruined shops, burned-out homes, and crumbling government buildings. Blocks of violet marble the size of fishing boats, once inlaid with gems and inscribed with the names and faces of ancient Illini princes, sat like upended jewelry boxes in the midst of the devastated streets. Those jewels that had not been lost when the Defenders cast down the Spire had long since been pried away by thieves, and the names and faces of that long line of princes were now cracked, smashed, and otherwise defaced.

  The Spire of Dreams’ death was a literal representation of the death of old Illin, a fact which hadn’t escaped Monda and his pack of thugs. Their meetings were held in an old antechamber of that fallen citadel, tipped sideways and sagging with the weight of all that stone, and yet still standing. Abe sometimes wondered how far it had fallen and how it had managed to stay intact. He wasn’t wondering that now, however—there were too many eyes upon him. Angry, violent, expectant eyes, lit by greasy orange torchlight.